3 In the section beginning ‘I can never trace the moment …’ (page 18), how does the writer move from one time period to another? 4 In the section beginning ‘I don’t want to think about them’ (page 18), in what ways is it suggested that the soldiers are not heroes? How is it suggested that war is brutal and nasty rather than heroic? © Harcourt Education Limited,
From the length of the grass, to the color of Mary Anne’s culottes, it was all probably made up. To his audience, the truth is a burden. O’Brien was burdened with the truth and the need to tell it. But simply stating facts in monotone got no one’s attention. The readers were never truly there.
A gun cannot be fired unless it has first been fired. It is only until the Kings regular troops had come to about half of a quarter of a mile within the meeting house that the commander of the troop raised his sword and ordered the King’s regular troops to fire. Simon Winship testified that it is only after the commander of the King’s regular troops shouted fire that shooting began (Simon Winship). According to the diary entries of Lt. John Barker, it is the King’s
The book never really fully explains who Dunbar is. Is he just a friend who is also just trying to get out of combat and is a friend of Yassarian. Why does it say that he just has to keep falling on his face in order to recieve his meals in bed, I didnt really understaand that part. ??? And why, when Yassarian was censoring the letters would he do such things to them.
The Things They Carried, a novel written by Tim O’Brian is a series of twenty-two short stories dealing with the Vietnamese war. The protagonist, Tim O’Brian, who shares the name of the book’s author, is faced with many challenges and tragedies while going through life before, during, and after the war. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brian uses both reality and fiction when narrating his stories, thus leaving the reader to determine what is fact and story among the many excerpts of the book. Storytelling is key in the fictional aspects of the novel; as for it deals with character O’Brian’s self-healing process from his memories of the brutal war by writing war stories. As O’Brian explains, story telling is effective because "by telling
I halted and held my breath.” (Beah, 35) This is when the rebels invaded a village he was in and started shooting at him. You can sense the terror that he felt when he was shot at. Later, when Ishmael is recruited to the army, he has the same feeling towards guns. “He gave me the gun. I held it in my trembling hand.
Irony Why do authors use irony? Authors can use irony to show the purpose of the story, whether it is to entertain, to warn, or to create suspense. Some choose to use situational irony, and some choose verbal or dramatic irony- or any blend of the three. Authors use irony to add interest to their stories. Tim O’Brien uses irony in his short story “Where have you gone, charming Billy?” The story set in Viet Nam during the war, revolves around a young man on his first day in country.
All the reader knew up until that point was that he disappeared and no one ever saw him again. But it turns out that earlier in the novel; there was a body that Jim would not let Huck see. The reader always that Jim thought it was because it was too mangled for Huck to see. This is situational irony because it is a complete different view on what happens after the novel ends. Now, Huck can get his money and never worry about returning to the awful care of Pap.
According to Albert Kropp, “Two years of shells and bombs - a man won’t peel that off as easy as a sock” (87). When a man is in the war for two years, the war will become a part of him, because of the horrors and terrors he has faced in the field. Two years of the war isolates a man from civilian life, and eventually, the war will identify him, causing it to be very difficult to make the transition of war life back to civilian life. Paul reflects back to the innocence the war has taken from him as he states, “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world, and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our heart.
Title Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried blends the truth of a Vietnam War memoir and the facts of a writer’s autobiography. He combines imagination with reality, all the while meditating on the war, his memories, and the power to redeem oneself through storytelling. The song “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried both The “things” of the title that O’Brien’s characters carry are both literal and figurative. While they all carry heavy physical loads, including steel helmets, boots, guns, ammunition, and flak jackets, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, made up of responsibility, anguish, horror, love, and longing. Each man’s physical encumbrance accentuates his emotional encumbrance.